The Part No One Sees

by Annie
September 1996

No one really knows me. Not my friends, my parents, my teachers. The person they see is your average, everyday teenager. Always carrying around her CD player, hanging out with her friends, gushing about guys.

What they don't see is the real me. They don't see me crying after hearing a fag joke at school, they don't see me gushing over k.d. lang or Ellen DeGeneres. Without having any clue they're seeing a made-up character. Someone I've invented for the "outside world".

Sure they can see the boyish clothes, the short hair, the masculine personality, but that's just on the outside. On the inside, there's this lesbian whose eyes follow every woman walking down the mall, a lesbian who works an hour on her hair, not to impress the cutest guy in school, but instead to be noticed by the most beautiful woman in the state of Minnesota.

Someday I'm going to drop the made-up person and I'm going to be one person, myself. The real me. Someday.

Annie, 14, lives in a small town in Minnesota. She enjoys writing, reading, playing sports and listening to music.